Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - CORPORATISM.
An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy.
The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a
worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good.
The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't.
John Ralston Saul

15 August, 2008

Sinatra Mafia - Celeb CIA spies

Frank Sinatra told his daughter Tina that he was involved with the Mafia in helping John F Kennedy win the crucial West Virginia primary election in 1960, she claims in her autobiography.

The singer's connection with the Mob has long been suspected, but FBI files show that J Edgar Hoover, the bureau chief, was never able to find evidence. Tina, 52, says in her book My Father's Daughter, to be published next week, that he told her all about it.

Frank Sinatra with mob leaders

Sinatra said that Joseph Kennedy, who was masterminding his son's campaign, contacted him, anxious to get the Mafia's help in securing the trade union vote. This was in the gift of Sam Giancana, who ruled much of the Chicago underworld. Tina says that her father was approached because Joseph Kennedy "knew dad had access to Sam Giancana".

She writes: "It would be in Jack Kennedy's best interest if his father did not make the contact directly. Dad was on an errand." Tina says Sinatra told her that he had agreed to act as a go-between and that Giancana said he would help the Kennedys. The mobster told him: "It's a couple of phone calls."

stooge for the Mafia

But after Kennedy reached the White House he told his brother Robert, the attorney general, to crack down on the Mafia. Tina said that Giancana, thinking that the Kennedys were reneging on a deal, was furious.

"Sam was saying: 'That's not right. You know he owes me', meaning Joe Kennedy. Dad, I think, said: 'No, I owe you. I asked for the favour'." Tina says that, to repay the gangster, her father "went to Chicago and played in Giancana's club, the Villa Venice". The singer took his fellow "rat packers", Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr, with him to stage a demanding 16 shows in eight days.

Tina also claims that Sinatra acted as a courier for the Central Intelligence Agency. "Because he controlled his own air travel, the CIA would ask him - and many others with that capacity - to courier a body, a living person, you know, not a corpse, but a diplomat, or papers." Sinatra never revealed who or what he was transporting. Tina says: "We asked him; he didn't say."

Marilyn Monroe even had a dog called MAF (Mafia)“Maf was a little white French poodle who was given to MM in New York by Frank Sinatra. Sinatra had purchased the dog from Natalie Wood’s mother. Marilyn named the dog “Maf” because of Frank Sinatra’s alleged mafia connections. lnterestingly, to spite Arthur Miller, Marilyn used to let Maf sleep on an expensive white coat that Miller had presented her. When Marilyn returned to live in Hollywood, she had Maf flown back to be with her. Following her death, Maf was inherited by Frank Sinatra’s secretary, Gloria Lovell”.

US celebrities spied during WWII

Julia Child was hired by the OSS in the summer of 1942 for clerical work

Several well-known American public figures were spies during World War II, declassified documents have confirmed.

The celebrities include the chef Julia Child, the historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr, the film actor Sterling Hayden, and the baseball player Moe Berg.

The 750,000 documents published by the National Archives are part of a massive archive on the wartime intelligence unit, the Office of Strategic Services.

Founded in 1942, the OSS is considered to be a forerunner of the CIA.

It was responsible for collecting and analysing information required by the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, and for helping to organize guerrilla fighting, sabotage and espionage abroad.

Top secret

The release of the OSS archive, including 35,000 top-secret personnel files, unmasks one of the last secrets of the wartime intelligence agency, which was disbanded after three years in 1945.

I think it's terrific... All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS

Elizabeth McIntoshFormer OSS agent

The National Archives said the papers included "initial applications to join the OSS; preliminary training and subsequent work assignments; pay, leave and travel documents; evaluations, basic medical information; and awards, decorations and discharge papers".

It was already known that Mrs Child - the doyenne of US television cookery shows, who died in 2004 - had worked for the OSS, but the documentation includes several new details about her history.

When Mrs Child applied to work for the agency, she admitted at least one failing - impulsiveness. In her OSS application, she included a note expressing regret that she had left a department store job because she did not get along with her boss.

Moe Berg was approached by the OSS because of his language skills

"I made a tactical error and was out," she explained.

The baseball player Moe Berg was recruited because of his knowledge of German and several other European languages.

Other public figures confirmed as former OSS spies are former Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg; Kermit Roosevelt, the son of former President Theodore Roosevelt; John Hemingway, son of the author Ernest Hemingway; the movie director John Ford; and Miles Copeland, the father of Stewart Copeland, the drummer of the rock band The Police.

Elizabeth McIntosh, a 93-year-old former OSS agent now living in Woodbridge, Virginia, praised the release of the documents.

"I think it's terrific," she told the Associated Press. "They've finally, after all these years, they've gotten the names out. All of these people had been told never to mention they were with the OSS."

WWII spy agency turned into a celebrity 'Who's Who'

Friday, August 15, 2008 BY BRETT J. BLACKLEDGETHE ASSOCIATED PRESS

WASHINGTON - Where do you look when you want to recruit spies? Just about everywhere, judging from the formerly top-secret records of the World War II agency that became today's CIA.

There was the young woman who became TV chef Julia Child. And labor lawyer Arthur Goldberg, who became a Supreme Court justice. And young scholar Arthur Schlesinger, who became a presidential adviser.

Not to mention a codes enthusiast who later ran CBS, an Oscar-winning Hollywood director and the sons of Ernest Hemingway and Teddy Roosevelt.

Names and details on nearly 24,000 onetime intelligence workers are included among 750,000 formerly top-secret government records released Thursday by the National Archives. The documents describe a worldwide spy network during World War II managed by the Office of Strategic Services, the intelligence outfit that later became the CIA.

The personnel files, long withheld from the public, provide insights into young agents now known for other careers. For instance, when Julia McWilliams, later the ebullient chef, applied to work for the spy agency, she admitted at least one failing: impulsiveness.

At 28 as an advertising manager at W&J Sloane furniture store in Beverly Hills, Calif., she clashed with new store managers and left her job abruptly.

"I made a tactical error and was out," she explained in a note attached to her OSS application.

She was hired in 1942 for clerical work with the intelligence agency and later worked directly for OSS Director William Donovan, the personnel records show.

* Chicago lawyer Goldberg, whose legal work with labor unions made him an attractive spy candidate to rally European labor unions to help with the war effort, years before President Kennedy appointed him to the Supreme Court.

* And Schlesinger, who spent much of his time with OSS working in London as an intelligence officer and writer on the political staff, producing reports on political activities.

"His understanding and familiarity with the political history of European countries, achieved by years of study and firsthand observation ... admirably qualify him for this responsible work," one OSS official wrote about Schlesinger, who became a noted historian and one of Kennedy's closest advisers.

The personnel files from the CIA archives raise questions about another World War II mystery - the role of jailed mobster Charles "Lucky" Luciano in wartime intelligence efforts. An archivist's note that reads "Lucky?" near the name Michael Luciano on a list of OSS agents questions whether this is the gangster.

It's not likely, but it's not clear, said William Cunliffe, an archivist who has worked extensively with the OSS records at the National Archives. Cunliffe said while Luciano's cooperation with Naval Intelligence officers during World War II has been written about, none of the OSS files indicates he served officially with that agency.

Some of those on the list were identified previously as having worked for the OSS, but their personnel records have never been made public

In today's world, the goals of a committed anarchist should be to defend some state institutions from the attack against them, while trying at the same time to pry them open to more meaningful public participation— and ultimately, to dismantle them in a much more free society, if the appropriate circumstances can be achieved.Noam Chomsky